A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

First, it removed the temporal diadem of the house of David away from them, i. e. the supreme and independent government of ⟨p. 108⟩themselves. It took away the crown and diadem from the nation. The time now approaching when Christ, the great and everlasting king of his church, was to reign, it was time for the typical kings to withdraw. As God said by Ezekiel, ch. xxi.26. "He removed the crown and diadem, that is might be no more, till he should come whose right it was." The Jews henceforward were always dependent on the governing power of other nations, until Christ came, for near six hundred years, excepting about 90 years, during which space they maintained a sort of independence, by continual wars under the dominion of the Maccabees and their posterity.

Again, by the captivity, the glory and magnificence of the temple was taken away, and the temple that was built afterwards, was nothing in comparison with it. Thus it was meet, that when the time dr•w nigh that the glorious antetype of the temple should appear, that the typical temple should have in glory withdrawn.

Again, another thing that they lost by the captivity, was the two tables of the testimony delivered to Moses, written with the finger of God; the two tables on which God with his own finger wrote the ten commandments on Mount Sinai. These seem to have been preserved in the ark till the captivity. These were in the ark when Solomon placed the ark in the temple, 1 Kings viii.9. There was nothing in the ark, save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb. And we have no reason to suppose any other, but that they remained there as long as that temple stood. But the Jews speak of these as finally lost at that time; though the same commandmn were preserved in the book of the law. Thse tables also were withdrawn on the approach of their antetype.